2012 Birthday Socks

Since Lawson and I have been dating, each year I have knit him a pair of socks for his birthday (OK, often they are actually finished a bit after his birthday... you can see the last couple years socks here and here).  After making him fingering weight socks the first year I have stuck to heavier weight yarns since then... I am always amazed by how much larger his socks need to be than mine, so this helps me get them finished without getting totally frustrated.  Sport weight yarn seems to be the perfect weight, yielding a really wearable slightly heavy weight sock, and actually I have been knitting my own socks with sport weight yarn more and more too, and enjoying how quick they are to make and how they are more durable.

So I am always keeping an eye out for nice sport weight sock yarn, and looking online last year I asked Lawson what colorway he preferred of Heritage 150 Paints sock yarn, and I have to say I was surprised when he picked this colorful red and orange one!  It was certainly more fun to knit with than some of the drab solid colors I've used for his socks in other years and he seems very happy with them.

I finished them a good month or two after his birthday this year, and then the first time he wore them (just around the house) they somehow got a huge run in the sole of one foot.  I don't know if there was a problem with the yarn or if they just got caught on a nail or something and ripped, but I took them back to fix and didn't get to it until early this year.  Since I had knitted them from the top down, I just took out the foot starting where the rip was, and reknit the foot and toe.  Lawson was very patient but has enjoyed having his finished socks back!

One of my favorite knitting books is Sensational Knitted Socks, since it lets you come up with a customized pattern for socks based on your gauge and the repeat of the stitch pattern you want to use, and I used that again for these socks.  I just did a simple mistake rib (alternating rows of k1 p1 and rows of knit) for the pattern, with a bit of a rolled cuff at the top and my regular heel flap heel and standard toe.

Socks are one of my favorite things to knit, but I really didn't knit as many pairs last year as usual - between getting caught up with knitting hats and cowls last winter/spring and then baby sweaters as gifts and for our baby most of the summer and fall!  I had bought this Shibui Stacatto sock yarn almost entirely because I loved the colors, and cast on a pair of socks for myself on Christmas eve when I didn't have another project to work on and didn't have anything else ready to start.

As I was knitting I loved how soft the yarn was (its a beautiful blend of soft merino wool and silk with just a touch of nylon), and just hoped that they would wear well over time.  I am so thrilled that after several washings they are still in very good shape and deliciously soft - I am definitely planning to find more of this yarn and make myself some more socks with it!

I kept these socks even more basic, with just simple stockinette stitch after a cuff, and they were really quick to knit up since the yarn is sport weight.  I referred to a new book, The Sock Knitter's Handbook, (by the same author as my favorite Sensational Socks book), in knitting these - it has the key formulas for heels and toes and other essential sock-knitting info, and is a smaller more portable size.  I'm excited to have a new handy sock reference book!

greetings from your absentee blogger

I've been a bit MIA around here lately, but I have a good excuse!  We are in the process of buying our first house (closing in 3 weeks) so that has been eating up what spare time I had.  We are very excited!  I actually have still been squeezing in some time for crafts, I just haven't been good about taking photos and writing blog posts.  So this is a knitting update of things that I made several weeks ago since the more recent projects still need to have ends woven in, photos taken, etc.  This hat was a quick one that I made for the recent craft hope project to make hats and bags for kids with cancer.

I also was knitting the rose ribs sock pattern from the book Sock Knitting Master Class, which I really should write more about at some point - it's a great book - but I didn't take the time to knit a gauge swatch or even to try on the socks until I was 2/3 through with the first one, and they are way. too. small.  Bummer.  The lace pattern was so pretty and not that hard to keep track of while knitting, so I may try to knit these again on larger needles or in the larger size at another time.  But for now I decided I that my life was complicated enough right now and my knitting should be easy.

So I treated myself to some yummy soft malabrigo chunky yarn in this fun yellow/ochre/almost chartreuse color and knitted myself up a quick cowl (the luxe cowl pattern) which I found via angry chicken.  I normally don't wear a lot of bright colors so I kind of surprised myself when I bought this yarn, and have surprised myself even more to find that I love wearing it!  So I am kind of on a run of making cowls... it is starting to feel like spring here but I am tempted to make another before it warms up for real... maybe this one that a friend and I saw a sample for at a yarn shop here in Portland?

Happy spring to you!

Knitting Update

You may have noticed, I haven't been too good at doing regular blog updates lately other than the QAL... I am hoping that as we settle in and get into more of a routine here I will be able to get back into a more regular blogging schedule.  I have also been having a lot less time to read blogs and to comment when I do get a chance to read them - often I seem to be reading blogs in spare minutes here and there on my phone, when I am waiting in a line or something, and it really isn't easy to comment then.  So if I seem to have disappeared, I apologize!  I am really still reading many folks blogs and try to pop in and comment when I can, but I do miss getting to be a more active participant in this online community.  I actually had a chance both to catch up on my quilting and my blog-reading a bit yesterday with the holiday, which was really nice.

In any case, even though I haven't been posting regular knitting updates I have been getting a fair amount of knitting done, since I have a pretty long commute and am in a carpool, which gives me lots of good knitting time. So here is a roundup of my knitting projects from the past couple months (for more details like specific yarns used etc, all of these are up on my ravelry account):

I finished Lawson's 2011 birthday socks, last mentioned here (I forget exactly when - definitely late but I think within a month of his actual birthday, so good enough).   I really enjoyed knitting those quick sport weight socks for him, so I promptly cast on a pair for myself using yarn which I had bought in Maine.  They really are so fast to knit, very fun!

I love knitting myself socks and was tempted to cast on another pair after I finished those, but I decided that I should turn my attention to some holiday presents.  I had made a number of cotton/linen knitted washcloths as gifts a few years ago and had a request for some more this year.  I knit the peach one below in a feather and fan pattern, and then knit the two grey ones below in a waffle pattern and a garter stripe pattern respectively.

I think that is it for knitted holiday gifts on my plate (although I may think of more), so I have turned my attention to making myself some new winter scarves and hats.  Most of our stuff is still in storage and while I have a hat and scarf that are not in storage, they aren't my favorites, so it seemed like a good chance to knit up some nice new ones.   Plus I actually don't love any of the scarves that I have now, even the ones that are packed up.  To start, I am knitting this fun lace scarf with a leafy motif, one of my favorite design elements.  I have actually made a lot more progress since I took these photos a number of days ago, so I am probably halfway done - I'm using knitpicks gloss fingering weight yarn and I just love it - it is so soft and squisy, but not pilly so far.

I have knitted a number of projects with lace designs, but this is the first time that I have really figured out how to read a chart and relied on that while knitting rather than written instructions.  I think that partially this is because the design is less repetitive/intuitive to me, so I haven't memorized it and really do have to look at the chart as I go.

I also made a center pull ball for the first time, which worked very well.  I just wrapped the ball pretty much as I normally would, but was carefully not to wrap it too tightly at first and was also careful to leave the end hanging out the whole time.  I was going to link to a tutorial showing how to do this but all the ones I found involve either wrapping it around a paper tube to start, or your thumb!  So I guess I made up my own way without realizing it... it worked fine but one of the other methods might be more foolproof.  I especially like that now I don't have to worry so much that my yarn will roll all over the place if I accidentally drop the ball.  I actually dropped my ball of yarn at a movie theater once and it rolled down quite a few rows, then I had to go and retrieve it after the movie ended... and I tried not to think about what is on the floors of movie theaters where it had been rolling around, yuck.

Adventures in Maine and birthday socks in progress

I am savoring the relaxed feeling after our week off in Maine as we sit in the airport and wait for our flight home, where several more days of frantic packing and moving await us.



My primary craft project for this trip was the annual pair of socks that I make Lawson for his birthday (which was this week) although as usual I am late in finishing them up. Like last year's socks, these are also made with knitpicks stroll sport, which I find knits up much faster but still makes a nice mid-weight sock. After making him regular fingering weight socks one year, I really appreciated how much larger men's feet are than women's, and decided to stick to heavier weight yarns for his socks from then on.

Some highlights from the rest of our trip:




After visiting friends, we headed up to Acadia national park and camped for three days. It rained the first night and the next day, but we were undeterred and went for a nice hike by the coast and up a small mountain... We figured we should get used to hiking in the rain since we are moving to Oregon!




We were rewarded on our hike when we found a delicious patch of wild blueberries, yum!




We also went for a nice bike ride on the carriage roads - definitely something I recommend checking out if you are in Acadia.




Our last day the weather was totally sunny and gorgeous and we enjoyed the coast some more (and we were extra excited that the weather worked out that way since we were able to dry our tent out entirely before packing it back up).








There are also lots of fun shops in midcoast Maine and I indulged in some vacation craft shopping, including these lovely fabrics from alewives fabrics in damariscotta mills...




And these luscious sock yarns (both sport weight, too, so I can knit quick socks for myself, too!) from heavenly socks yarns in Belfast Maine.



I definitely recommend a visit to both shops if you are in either area!

Wish me luck with the next three days of packing/moving, and then we are off to Hawaii! I can't wait!

Getting my Knitting Mojo Back

You may have noticed a lack of knitting posts around here. Last week, I finally came to terms with the fact that I just wasn't feeling excited about my two current WIPs - last seen here in a post from early March.  I have made really minimal progress since them, which tells you just how unexcited I was about them.  I felt weird not having a knitting project to take with me on the subway and on car trips, and that I felt like working on at random moments, so I finally admitted that despite all my claims of disliking having too many WIPs, it was time to start another project.  I cast on these socks some time early last week and must have had a lot of pent up knitting energy, because I finished them yesterday! (OK, so it may have also helped that we flew across the country for a short but lovely visit with friends in California for a long weekend, so I had lots of knitting time on the plane).

I do really still want to finish this sweater - clearly it will not be done by our one year anniversary as I had hoped/declared (since that date has come and gone),  and but I hope to finish it up in the next month or two.  I think I stalled out on this one partly because I just have trouble staying interested in sweaters and actually finishing them up, and partly because I starting having doubts about the fit, and whether I may have made the armholes too big, which definitely made me less motivated to finish it.  After having given it a good solid break though, I tried it on again the other day and feel much better about it.  Plus, I am nearly done with the body and then I just have to knit the two sleeves, which will be much more portable to carry around with me.  This is definitely the most complicated (and smallest gauge) sweater I have ever knitted and I think I should take the difficulty down a notch for my next sweater or two to try to minimize my sweater-finishing problem.  I really want to be a sweater-knitter!

These dragonfly socks were actually supposed to be my fun distraction from not feeling like knitting the sweater, but I was feeling less and less excited about them too.  Partly because they pale in comparison to the original, lost dragonfly socks, partly because I think there is just too much going on here with the yarn and the lace pattern, and then finally because they seem a bit too small when I've tried them on... I haven't decided yet whether I will finish these up or just frog the yarn and put it back in the stash for a more appropriate pattern.

In the end, the stripey socks were a much better distraction from sweater-knitting woes.  Knitted with a fun self-striping sport weight yarn that my mom had given me for Christmas a few years ago, they were quick and entertaining to knit.  I had even more trouble than usual finding the center-pull string and had to deal with a lot of "yarn barf" (Lawson loves this term) at the beginning - it was much worse than the remainder you see above - but I finally got it figured out and it was smooth sailing from there.

I even got the pattern repeats to match up on the two socks!  Miraculously, my first sock was nearly exactly 2 pattern repeats long, so I just tried to pay attention to keeping them lined up as I knit the second sock.  I don't mind socks that don't match, but it does bug me when they almost match but are just a tiny bit off, so I figured I should do my best to sync them up.  Now that these are done I actually cast on a baby hat with the remaining yarn, and am determined to get back to work on my sweater soon!

Knitting update, or how did I end up with 4 WIPs?

Luckily I am now down to three WIPs (works in progress) but for a moment I had four, which is significantly more than my usual number.  I blame these socks.

I really like to complete one knitting project before moving on to the next, but I have a bad track record of knitting half a sweater and then putting it aside for six months before coming back and finishing it.  Which is what has happened with the sweater mentioned in this post (at which point I was also not knitting it).  Although I was thinking about it the other day and realized I started it in May last year a few weeks before our wedding, so I really should get back to knitting it - I would like to finish it before our one year anniversary if I can.  Anyways, although I like to have only one project in progress at once the sweater situation has meant that I have had two WIPs at a time for a while now, and sometimes three.

So, when we went to Atlanta recently I realized as we were rushing out the door that I had only packed my one currently in progress knitting project, the green yarn-over cable socks, and I was pretty sure I would finish them while we were there.  Not wanting to get caught on a relaxing vacation without a knitting project I grabbed a ball of sock yarn figuring I already had the right size needles etc for the project.  I have a bit of a sock-knitting addiction, so my natural propensity is to knit pair after pair of socks anyways... So after I finished the green socks, I cast on for my second attempt at the Dragonfly Socks.  I really liked this pattern and was very sad when I left the first pair on the metro, so was happy to try the pattern again.

However, when I got home, I forced myself to put aside the socks and work on another project that I had been meaning to start, making a lace cotton/linen washcloth for my seven year old god-daughter who had let me know she would like one for "the next gift-giving occasion", which will be her birthday later this month.  I had made them for holiday gifts a few years ago and apparently she is always stealing her mom's and wanted her own.  How could I say no to that?  So now I was up to three WIPs... more than I ideally like to have, but not too bad.

But them some good friends of ours had their baby and we found out she was a girl (they had decided not to find out the sex in advance).  We were super excited for them and I wanted to put a gift in the mail right away but decided that I just had to make a knitted hat to go along with some pants, shoes and a bib that I had sewn before.  So... there I was, with four WIPs.  It wasn't really that bad since two of them were pretty quick projects but I did feel a bit like there were knitting projects scattered everywhere.  Although that says more about the level of organization at our house than anything else.

In any case, I luckily finished off the hat and am now back down to a more comfortable number of 3 (knitting) WIPs.  Although I think I will stay at three for a while because after I finish the washcloth I have a few other small projects I am going to try to convince myself to knit before I go back to the dragonfly socks.

How about you - do you like to finish up one project before starting the next, or do you like to have multiple WIPs going, either in knitting or sewing or other crafts?  What are you working on now?

Craft update: more socks, baby booties, and a new sewing machine!

I haven't had much time to post but I still have had quite a lot going on on the craft front.  In knitting news, I finished these socks...

and then I quickly made a pair of fetching mitts (to match this hat which I had previously made) - they have been great for fall weather.

And I have started the L'illo sweater for my nephew (who is 2 1/2 months old) - making it in the 12 month size since he is already wearing 6 month size clothes and I want them to get some good use out of it.  I didn't take a pic yet but will at some point. 

Finally, my sad knitting news is that halfway through the second sock, I left the dragonfly socks I was making on the metro :(.  I put in a missing items report and was hoping they would turn up, but it was several months ago and no word, so I am out of luck.  They were my first lace socks, too... I already have the yarn picked out for another lace pair, though.  Oh well.

In sewing news, I made a few pairs of booties for my nephew, in larger sizes since he has mostly outgrown the original ones I made him.  I made them using the same pattern that I used before, but I enlarged it 5% and 10% to make larger booties.  I initially enlarged it more but it turned out to be too much... hopefully these sizes will work well and fit him for a while (the larger ones will probably not fit him for a few months).

I also made some monkey booties to match the monkey bibs I had made earlier, for a gift for friends who are expecting.  I am sad that the scraps from this monkey fabric I got for a baby quilt about 3 years ago are almost all used up... they have been so fun to use!  I have decided this means that I should get other fun kid/baby fabrics that I can have just to play around with.  Anyone have any suggestions?

Finally, my most exciting news is that I got a NEW SEWING MACHINE!  Wahoo!!  I will probably post more about it later, but the short story is that my old sewing machine was given/loaned to me by an old family friend, and it is a 1950's singer featherweight... which is lovely and solid as a rock, but can also be frustrating because it often has issues with tension, and only goes forward and backwards... no zigzag, no buttonholes, no nothing.  I had been thinking I would save up and get a Bernina, but then I saw this Brother machine reviewed on Amazon and it sounded too good to be true... I figured, at this price even if it doesn't last forever, it's worth a shot. 

Brother CS6000I Sew Advance Sew Affordable 60-Stitch Computerized Free-Arm Sewing Machine



Amazingly it even came with a walking foot and a free-motion quilting foot, in addition to all the normally-included feet.  I am super excited but also a bit overwhelmed... I am used to working out projects within a very constrained universe of sewing options (as I said, forwards and backwards), so all these stitches and feet are giving me so many ideas that I'm not sure where to start.  So far, all I've done is read the instruction manual, but tomorrow I am planning to get set up and give her a try!  Wish me luck!

Yosemite Socks

I'm calling these my Yosemite socks since I knit basically all of the second sock on the way to and from our recent quick trip to Yosemite (not to mention in Yosemite).  Plus as Lawson points out it sounds bit like Yosemite Sam and that is fun too.  Yosemite was beautiful!

The yarn is Stroll Handpainted from Knitpicks in the Make Believe colorway.  I was happy with how the yarn striped and the colors.  I have another pair of socks I made with Essential (the old name for Stroll) and I find that it feels a bit artificial as it wears and not that soft, but it is certainly durable.  I'll have to see how these socks do...

I used my favorite More Sensational Knitted Socks as a general guide for the pattern and I tried the round toe which I have never done before.  I was pretty happy with how it turned out - I think it shows off the stripes nicely - and I appreciated not having to do any grafting at the end (which I really don't mind too much, but it did save some time). 

I keep telling myself that after I just finish this next project I will really buckle down and work on my sweater (I haven't made much progress since this post).  Somehow I always hit a rut about halfway through knitting a sweater.  So I have been pushing myself to get back to it because I know I will really like it when I am done.  However, as you may have gathered from the fact that I practically didn't have any time to post here in September, things have been a little hectic in our lives lately and finally I decided to just give myself a break and knit whatever I feel like knitting.  Which I think means there will be several more pairs of socks on the horizon and probably some more pumpkin baby hats (have to get those done before halloween of course!). 

Here is the next pair of socks I am working on - made with really subtle, pretty yarn from Spunky Eclectic using the dragonfly socks pattern.  A lot of the socks I have knit myself have been in really bright fun colors so this is a nice change and I think that I will really enjoy wearing these - they feel a bit more classy.  These are also my first lace socks (or really, socks with any pattern significantly more complicated than a rib), and it has gone really well!  Socks are often my mindless project that I pick up for a few minutes here and there, so I was worried that I would lose track of the pattern but it hasn't been an issue really, the pattern was quite easy to learn.  I made a few mods including replacing all the sl1 k1 psso's with ssk's, which I find much easier to work, but mostly the pattern has been great.

Birthday socks complete

I finished Lawson's socks on Sunday - after his birthday but within his birthday week, so I thought I did pretty well all things considered.  It has been unseasonably warm here in Washington state so he hasn't had much occasion to wear them yet, but he seems to be happy with them.  I'm glad I used the sport weight yarn, it made it go a lot faster than the year I made him regular fingering weight ones.

The other big project that I brought to work on is the Cables and Os sweater from No Sheep for You... but I forgot the pattern, doh.  We may stop by a library tomorrow to see if I can borrow the book for the rest of the trip.  In the meantime, I have been knitting some cute pumpkin baby hats which I have been making up - I will post the two variations (and patterns for both) when they are done.